The Introduction.

The Greek Antiquities are full of poetical fictions because the Greeks wrote nothing in prose before the conquest of Asia by Cyrus the Persian. Then Pherecides Scyrius & Cadmus Milesius introduced the writing in prose. Pherecydes Atheniensis about the end of the reign of Darius Hystaspis wrote of antiquities, & digested his work by Genealogies & was recconed one of the best genealogers. Epimenides the historian proceeded also by genealogies; & Hellanicus, who was twelve years older than Herodotus, digested his history by the ages or successions of the priestesses of Iuno Argiva. Others digested theirs by the kings of the Lacedemonians, or Archons of Athens. Hippias the Elean about thirty years before the fall of the Persian Empire, published a breviary or list of the Olympic Victors; & about ten years before the fall thereof, Ephorus the disciple of Isocrates formed a Chronological history of Greece, beginning with the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus & ending with the siege of Perinthus in the twentith year of Philip the father of Alexander the great But he digested things by generations, & the recconing by Olympiads was not yet in use, nor doth it appear that the reigns of kings were yet set down by numbers of years. The Arundelian marbles were composed sixty years after the death of Alexander the great (An. 4 Olymp. 128) & yet mention not the Olympiads. But in the next Olympiad, Timæus Siculus published an history down to his own in several books down to his own times according to the Olympiads, comparing the Ephori, the kings of Sparta, the Archons of Athens, & the Priestesses of Argos with the Olympic victors so as to make the Olympiads, & the genealogies & successions of Kings, Archons, & Priestesses & poetical histories suit with one another, according to the best of his judgement. And where he left off, Polybius began & carried on the history.

So then a little after the death of Alexander the great they began to set down the generations reigns & successions in numbers of years, & by putting reigns & successions equipollent to generations, & three generations to an hundred or an hundred & twenty years (as appears by their chronology) they have made the antiquities of Greece three or four hundred years older then the truth. And this was the original of the technical chronology of the Greeks. Eratosthenes wrote about an hundred years after the death of Alexander the great. He was followed by Apollodorus, & these two have been followed ever since by Chronologers.

But how uncertain th

But how uncertain their Chronology is, & how doubtful it was reputed by the Greeks of those times, may be understood by these passages of Plutarch. Some reccon, saith heaa in the life of Lycurgus., Lycurgus contemporary to Iphitus, & to have been his companion in ordering the Olympic festivals: amongst whom was Aristotel the philosopher, arguing from the Olympic Disc which had the name of Lycurgus upon it. Others supputing the times by the succession of the kings of the Lacedemonians, as Eratosthenes & Apollodorus, affirm that he was not a few years older than the first Olympiad. First Aristotel & some others made him as old as the first Olympiad, then Eratosthenes, Apollodorus & some others made him above an hundred years older. And in another place Plutarchbb in the life of Solon. tells us: The congress of Solon with Crœsus, some think they can confute by Chronology. But an history so illustrious, & verified by so many witnesses, & (which is more) so agreeable to the manners of Solon, & so worthy of the greatness of his mind & of his wisdome, I cannot persuade my self to reject because of some Chronological Canons, as they call them: which hundreds of authors correcting have not yet been able to constitute any thing certain, in which they could agree among themselves about repugnancies. 2 It seems the Chronologers had made the legislature of Solon too ancient to consist with that Congress.

For reconciling such repugnancies, Chronologers have sometimes doubled the persons of men. So when the Poets had changed Io the daughter of Inachus into the Egyptian Isis, Chronologers made her husband Osiris or Bacchus & his mistress Ariadne as old as Io, & so feigned that there were two Ariadnes, one the mistress of Bacchus & the other the mistress of Theseus, & two Minoses their fathers, & a younger Io the daughter of Iasus, writing Iasus corruptly for Inachus. And so they have made two Pandions & two Erechtheuses, giving the name of Erechthonius to the first. Homer calls the first Erechtheus. And by such corruptions they have exceedingly perplexed ancient history.

And as for the chronology of the Latines, that is still more uncertain. Plutarch represents great uncertainties in the originals of Rome. And so doth Servius. The old records of the Latines were burnt by the Galls sixty & four years before the death of Alexander the great, & Quintus Fabius Pictor, the oldest historian of the Latines, lived an hundred years later than that king.

In sacred history, the Assyrian Empire began with Pul and Tiglathpilaser, & lasted about 170 years. And accordingly Herodotus hath made Semiramis only five generations or about 166 years older than Nitocris the mother of the last king of Babylon. But Ctesias hath made Semiramis only five generat 1500 years older than Nitocris, & feigned a long series of kings of Assyria whose names are not Assyrian nor have any affinity with the Assyrian names in scripture.

The priests of Egypt told Herodotus that Menes built Memphis & the sumptuous temple of Vlulcan in that city: & that Rhampsinitus, Mæris, Asychis & Psammiticus added magnificent porticos to that temple. And it is not likely that Memphis could be famous before Homer's days who doth not mention it, or that a temple could be above two or three hundred years in building. The reign of Psammiticus began about 655 years before Christ, & I place the founding of this temple by Menes about 257 years earlier. But the Priests of Egypt had so magnified their antiquities before the days of Herodotus, as to tell him that from Menes to Mæris (who reigned 200 years before Psammiticus,) there were 330 kings whowhose reigns took up as many ages, that is eleven thousand years, & had filled up the interval with feigned kings who had done and nothing. And before the days of Diodorus Siculus, they had raised their antiquities so much higher; as to place six eight or ten new reigns of kings between those kings whom they had represented to Herodotus to succeed one another immediately.

In the kingdom of Sicynon Chronologers have split Apis Epaphus or Epopeus into two kings whom they call Apis & Epopeus, & between them have inserted eleven or twelve feigned names of kings who did nothing, & thereby they have made its founder Ægialeus three hundred years older then his brother Phoroneus. Some have made the kings of Germany as old as the flood. And yet before the use of letters the names & actions of men could scarce be remembred above eighty or an hundred years after their deaths: & therefore I admit no chronology of things done in Europe above eighty years before Cadmus brought letters into Europe; none of things done in Germany before the rise of the Roman Empire.

Now since Eratosthenes & Apollodorus computed the times by the reigns of the kings of Sparta, and (as appears by their chronology still followed) have made the seventeen reigns of these kings in both races between the return of the Heraclides into Peloponesus & the battel of Thermopylæ take up 622 years, wchwhich is after the rate of 36$\frac{1}{2}$ years to a reign, & yet a race of seventeen kings of that length is no where to be3 to be met with in all true history, & kings at a moderate recconing reign but 18 or 20 years a piece one with another: I have stated the time of the return of the Heraclides by the last way of recconing, placing it about 340 years before the battel of Thermopylæ. And making the taking of Troy eighty years older then that return according to Thucydides, & the Argonautic expedition a generation older then the Trojan war, & the wars of Sesostris in Thrace & death of Ino the daughter of Cadmus a generation older then that expedition: I have drawn up the following chronological table so as to make Chronology suit with the course of nature, with Astronomy, with sacred history, with Herodotus the father of history, & with it self, without the many repugnancies complained of by Plutarch. I do not pretend to be exact to a year. There may be errors of five or ten years, & sometimes twenty, & not much above.